Hi all.
My venerable ender 3 has likely printed it’s last benchy. Plus side, the tech has advanced significantly since I bought it. Down side, I’ve not kept track of the newer options.
Can anyone give me a rundown of which are worth looking at, and which to avoid?
I’m mostly concerned with reliability, but a speed boost would definitely be welcome. A heated chamber and/or multi material would also be very nice to have.
I would like to keep the costs closer to £500 ($680) but can stretch that, if there is a machine worth it.
I also have a complete no on bamboo printers. I don’t like what they’ve done regarding abuse of the open source movement.
Thanks all!
Edit to add. I’m not against non open source printers. I just have an issue with companies trying to burn the ladder behind them and lock their customers into a bubble.
Double edit: The snapmaker U1 seems like my best option. Ticks all the boxes, while remaining well in budget.
Check out Qidi Ticks a few of the boxes and cheaper than Bambu
I’ve played with some qidi printers. I’ve found they are not the most reliable printers around.
It was a older machine however, so it might have been a unit issue, rather than a company one.
I like many here can recommend Prusa but honestly if you wanted to shop around this is the specs you are looking for:
Core XY is the new hotness thanks to Bamboo. But unless you want to print fast and loud a bed slinger still works.
What makes the biggest difference is the horned style and a direct drive printer is a game changer to print consistency. MK4s planetary gear is scary how much torque is in it but if you find any printer with a motor in its print head it’ll be worth it.
The other major improvement is auto bed levelling. Again Prusa’s nozzle solution is amazing, while magnets sensors are outdated but still works great if you printing on steel and the venerable plastic stick works but harder to recommend.
Finally magnetic sheets is a nice to have but finding a durable print bed like Garolite is better, just know that no one makes a Garolite bed so you’ll need to craft your own.
Other gimmicks you’ll find is ways to accelerate printing but I’ve honestly haven’t seen much improvement by using them and prefer the print quality when printing slower.
Had the prusa mini from when it came out and made the jump to the Core One when the reviews came out. Absolutely love it, fast and reliable. But the main reason is that it’s quieter than other similar options, it lives at the edge of a living space, and that’s a big factor for me. It’s only gotten quieter with firmware improvements.
The only prebuilts or kits I recommend currently are from Prusa. Fairly open and they have a strong track record for reliability.
If you’re willing to build, you might take a look at the Voron project. I hear good things about them, though reliability is largely up to your mechanical and electronics skills. I believe one or two of their builds are roughly in your price range.
That said, my wife recently surprised me by preordering the Flashforge Creator 5 Pro (Not really in your price range) as a gift. They seem to have a fairly solid track record for reliability, though they are not much better than Bamboo in terms of openness. They have other printers and I’ve heard mostly good things about their AD5X and Adventure 5M Pro which are more in line with your budget.
Snapmaker U1 is amazing, Elgoo Centuri is a great option as well
Came here to recommend the Snapmaker U1 as well. Put a Panda breath in it for heating (while ASA works reasonably well without it, it is nicer with one) and your set. Support for different nozzles per print is now available, but I haven’t tried it.
And the firmware is open source enough for basically all uses.
I came from.Bambu and am very happy I made the switch.
Oh man i haven’t tried ASA yet, I bought the lid so I’ve been waiting for that, but everything else has been ridiculously easy to print- and the gradient printing thing looks awesome, m going to download the orca build with it this weekend and try it out.
You will need a top for it either way, but it worked reasonably fine with a ikea like crate. (Had this while my old Bambu printed the enclosure)
It needs proper preheating of course AND a proper ventilation concept as the enclosure is far less air tight compared to e.g. the Bambus. And while ASA it not as nasty as ABS it still anything but healthy.
Good to know, how’s the heater work, pretty ok, I am thinking on picking one up, right now (on my bambu) I just have it in a larger insulated tent enclosure and heat the plate for 20 minutes but that’s a pain
I have the Srin Top hat with 6mm panels (that helps considerably with keeping the heat in) and the Panda breath. I would rather not heat such a large enclosure as well,as it also fries the motherboard,etc. and it additionally produces very uneven heat.
Both of those have a lot of bang for their buck. I had also missed both completely. 👍
I have the Snapmaker and I love it, better than my bambu p1s and Kobra 3 max
Honestly what isnt a bad approach, buying one used from a hobbyist. You get the full run down of the machine, rarely with a sales pitch and they arent afraid to tell you what theyre selling is NOT what you should be looking for. You also arent, normally, going to be buying a machine with tons and tons of miles on them. Most find craigslist because the machine’s owner upgraded or realized how long its been on a shelf for. Never bought 3d printer but have bought tons of tools like my cnc router, 2 desktop lathes, laser cutter and press brake, all small models I found not really needing them but always looking out for them… I learn more just going to look at them than i do running them loljkjk. Ive ran into this buying used cars too. There is a weird niche of things that cost so much new that most buying them are die hard hobbyists or trying to start a job shop. Either way they know so much about the machine youre buying amd love telling you everything they did with it.
None of the manufacturers have been great with open source, other than Prusa, to my knowledge.
You can get a heck of a lot more capable printer than an ender3 at that price point, even with multi material. If you want to keep waste down though you would need at least a dual head machine, or a toolhead switching machine which I think goes above your price range.
If you don’t need a big printer, and can pass on multilateral (unless you want to get a small INDX system for it later… for a bunch more money), at that price I’d spring for a Voron v0. Doesn’t get more open source than that.
I’ve only owned one 3D printer, a prusa mk3s which has done everything I’ve needed for at least 5 years. Assembled the printer from a kit and built my own enclosure to save some money. The mk4s kit is around $710 right now, so that’s the one I’d be researching first if I had to buy a new printer right now. Just my 2¢, good luck
Loving my prusa core. The indx system was just released for it, so I suggest you wait until the reviews are in, and if they are as good as I hope, then that’ll take care of your multi-filament needs.
I have a H2S, which has been incredible, but I’m eagerly awaiting INDX for either Core One+ or RatRig.
Hopefully some good news this spring!
INDX orders have been open for a week or two: https://www.prusa3d.com/product/indx-conversion-kit/
Unfortunately £1678 (Core 1 + indx) is well outside my max budget for a hobby machine.
I totally agree that it’s way too much money, this was more directed to the person hoping for INDX news.
If I had that amount for a printer, I’d get an LDO Delta Flyer kit or an LDO BabyBelt Pro kit. Maybe even 2! They’re pretty cheap last i checked
I’m mostly happy with my qidi plus 4 but I’m not sure of they can be recommended. The prices are good but they have some problems with keeping up the quality as I heard. Also the qidi plus4 is quite loud and I heard they multi color unit is very loud. Speed and print quality are excellent though. I’m not sure if there is a better printer for the price but maybe paying a bit more might give you a better printer.
I share your views on company policies. After the Ender S1, I went with the Ender K1C and can honestly recommend it.
I like Prusa and the Bamboo P1S, but they are enshittifying rapidly also.
Is prusa starting to enshittify? I know bamboo is.
I think prusa is fine, sorry for the ambiguity
From what I recall, people were upset with the release of the Prusa One for a multitude of reasons: moving away from printing their own parts, it’s a bit harder to repair, etc. They’re still really open and mod-able, but kinda? Take everything with a grain of salt though, I haven’t looked into them in like a year.
Edit: edited the wrong comment lmao
I’d recommend trying some budget-y CoreXY-type printer, but I’d be very careful with Creality lineup on that, as many of their options didn’t really turn out well, basic K1 is straight up dogwater, but some later revisions like KE might be better.
Mentioned already Elegoo Centauri is cool. If you want multi-filament system as well - take a look at Centauri Carbon 2, although it gets a bit less efficient with keeping temperature inside the enclosure due to big silly hat, and using different materials (e.g. different ones for supports) is going to be quite tricky.
I have an Ender 3 V3 Plus. Huge upgrade from my Ender 3 V2, but either print locally or flash custom firmware before connecting it to the internet. The app/website is so locked down I had to publish a private model to my account before printing anything not on Creality Cloud.
Edit to add: flashing custom firmware can be dangerous and brick your printer’s mobo, please exercise caution. I can’t provide any advice, as I have not flashed mine yet, but it’s on my to-do list.
I’ve had Ender 3 V3-SE, which had been an upgrade from basic Ender 3 Pro, which, funnily enough, got glitchy from firmware flashing gone wrong.
And on topic of Creality Cloud - I’ve just used Octoprint on RPi as the latter was simply cheaper at that moment. 🌚
OctoPrints what I’m also looking towards. Had a friend deploy it with his Ender 3 Pro, and it was so smooth compared to CC.
Octoprint is amazing. I’ve used it for years with my old ender 3.
Abuse of the open source movement? What did they do?
Not even playing lip service to supporting the open source stuff they built upon. They’ve also recently been trying to lockdown and paywall (or just drop) features. Including legal action against people trying to undo the damage.
The general sniff test is they are trying to lock people in before milking them for all they can.
To be fair though, the reason Bambu Lab printers work so well for most is in large part due to the walled garden approach.
I still disagree with it and will vote with my wallet by avoiding them, but I can see the appeal if you don’t know any better (or just don’t care!).
Prusa kind of tries to navigate both sides of the issue (not everything is open source anymore), so you can still get caught there.
Prusa has at least built up some credit with the community. Bambu came in planning on locking people in.
Agreed, what Bambu did is essentially steal the work of everybody and close it up, and go against anyone trying to reopen it.
That was definitely a nail in the coffin, as far as I am concerned. They’ve not passed my ‘sniff test’ since the start. The legal threats just show that they are doubling down, rather than backtracking.
